However, when I take out the space<td rv="SS" class='text '><abbr title=ShortSale><font color ='black'>SS</abbr></td>

the tooltip is rendered as 'ShortSale'.But, I do want a space i.e. (it should display 'short sale'). Help!!

TechnoBear
—
2012-10-31T17:02:28Z —
#2

Shouldn't your text be quoted? i.e.

<abbr title="Short Sale">

xhtmlcoder
—
2012-10-31T17:58:37Z —
#3

It is STRONGLY recommend you put attribute values in quotes in HTML 4.01, although the formal rules allow the omission of the quotes in some 'rare cases'. In XML and XHTML quotes are always required.

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.2.2 said:

In certain cases, authors may specify the value of an attribute without any quotation marks. The attribute value may only contain letters (a-z and A-Z), digits (0-9), hyphens (ASCII decimal 45), periods (ASCII decimal 46), underscores (ASCII decimal 95), and colons (ASCII decimal 58). We recommend using quotation marks even when it is possible to eliminate them.

Therefore within HTML 4.01 <br title=FrobozzMagic> would be CORRECT but <br title=Frobozz Magic> INCORRECT obviously within XHTML you MUST quote the attribute value. In other words always use: <abbr title="Short Sale">...</abbr> which is the best and safest way.

Even when not in doubt, quote anyway!

Stomme_poes
—
2012-10-31T20:52:02Z —
#4

I hate abbr, because it leaves keyboard-users in the dark.

ralphm
—
2012-10-31T23:48:10Z —
#5

Stomme_poes said:

I hate abbr, because it leaves keyboard-users in the dark.

Presumably that will change as devices catch up, though?

sinha
—
2012-11-01T15:37:49Z —
#6

Thanks all. Encapsulating it with "" worked.

Stomme_poes
—
2012-11-02T09:48:07Z —
#7

ralph said:

Presumably that will change as devices catch up, though?

They had over 10 years to catch up. I'm not optimistic.

ralphm
—
2012-11-02T12:50:02Z —
#8

Stomme_poes said:

They had over 10 years to catch up. I'm not optimistic.

But with HTML5 reinvigorating it and all ...

Stomme_poes
—
2012-11-02T21:48:51Z —
#9

http://html5doctor.com/the-abbr-element/ doesn't seem very invigorated. Still doesn't add any value with keyboard. Doesn't do anything different, doesn't mean anything different, and still broken in IE7. We could add abbr with Javascript before HTML5.

ralphm
—
2012-11-02T23:20:48Z —
#10

Stomme_poes said:

doesn't seem very invigorated.

Well, I really meant the fact that <acronymn> has been dropped in the new version of HTML in favor of this one might prod device makers into accepting that abbr needs to be taken more seriously. I prefer <abbr> purely because it seems more accurate to me (grammatically speaking).

Stomme_poes
—
2012-11-03T23:24:04Z —
#11

Meh, and they added embed. So those who've always used embed, will blindly continue using embed except now it's legal (if they cared, they wouldn't have used it in the first place), while the rest of us who never used embed will continue not to do so. I assume the same for abbr (who still isn't in any vendor's plan to get some keyboard love). Plus, it doesn't seem anyone is paying much attention to old tags under the "HTML5" banner anyways. Only the shiny new ones. And then they don't know how to use them most of the time.

Doesn't matter anyway. You can have a million Zeldmans exhorting semantics, and 99% of developers will say "whatever dude" and write something else anyway. Because nobody cares. HTML semantics is for weenies, just make it shiny with 300kb of Javascript and you'll get paid too much money.